Month: August 2017

Yesterday I took the day off work. It was supposed to be the day I painted my beehive in preparation for a swarm. Last month, when I was taking a beekeeping class, I had put my name on a swarm list. The swarm list is a list of local beekeepers who want to take custody of a colony that’s gone rogue.

“Gone rogue” is my paraphrase. There are a variety of reasons that bees might up and depart from a hive—this group of bees on the move is called a swarm—to seek a new home.

Sometimes I wake up slowly, sloughing off layers of sleep one at a time. On those days, there’s a witching moment where I float, suspended, on the crest of consciousness. My thoughts and feelings run on as normal, but no one’s in the driver’s seat.

Then, half a second behind, comes the tickle in the back of my mind—the nagging sense of unease. The sense that something is wrong. And that’s when I remember who I am, and what I fear, and the dread settles in my veins like cement.

I get up, and the dread rises with me. I go running, and imagine sweating the anxiety out. I shower, and the fear still clings, thick and oily, to my skin.